from the swing-low,-sweet-chariot dept

For the sake of humor, I am generally a big fan of hyperbole. Miley Cyrus is cheaper than a half-off sale at the flea market. The Chicago Cubs are more futile than a company that builds igloos in Hell. See? When you're trying to be funny, hyperbole just works. However, when you're trying to make an actual point, comparing people who have agreed to write for free on the internet to slaves doesn't work, isn't funny, and deserves an argumentative kick in the rocks. We saw this previously in a ridiculous lawsuit by writers of The Huffington Post who somehow thought that their previous agreement to write for free entitled them to untold amounts of cash.

Yet, despite the stupidity of that lawsuit, we're back on the topic again thanks to a New York Times piece that somehow conflates asking for a free written work with slavery, not calling people after you have sex with them, and the nuclear bomb (and, no, I'm not kidding about any of those three). Here are some highlights from Tim Kreider's screed against the world.

People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn’t be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing. They often start by telling you how much they admire your work, although not enough, evidently, to pay one cent for it.

Aaaaand we're off, and on shaky ground, no less. I have received numerous cans of soda and even haircuts for free in my life, but I understand what he's saying. If something has value, thou must pay for it. Which would be all fine and good if the concept of writing on the internet were a one-way street, a la a soda can. If Mike Masnick comes up to me, says he's thirsty, and asks me to simply give him my soda can so that he might drink the sugary goodness of it, I am left without my soda can and have gained nothing in return, economically speaking. However, if Mike Masnick asks me to write for Techdirt for free (which he did), and I agree (which I did) with the idea being that I'd get some pleasure from it, build up some reputation that might lead to future paid work (which it did, for Techdirt, actually), and so that I can include that work when I send out query letters to literary agents in the future (which I did), then the transaction works both ways. We both attain something of value and the price tag on my writing is only one part of the equation. In other words, this analogy sucks.

But Kreider takes this on directly.

A familiar figure in one’s 20s is the club owner or event promoter who explains to your band that they won’t be paying you in money, man, because you’re getting paid in the far more valuable currency of exposure. This same figure reappears over the years, like the devil, in different guises — with shorter hair, a better suit — as the editor of a Web site or magazine, dismissing the issue of payment as an irrelevant quibble and impressing upon you how many hits they get per day, how many eyeballs, what great exposure it’ll offer.

Well, you know what, chief, not all of us are willing, capable, or privileged enough to write silly op-eds for the New York Times. Many of us actually do value that exposure that Satan is offering us, which is why we, you know, agree to do this stuff. It seems to me to be the height of arrogance for someone who has done well for himself attempting to unite a population against what they themselves had agreed to do, on the notion that he knows better for the masses. Now for some of the fun stuff:

-This is partly a side effect of our information economy, in which “paying for things” is a quaint, discredited old 20th-century custom, like calling people after having sex with them.

-Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again.

-Here, for public use, is my very own template for a response to people who offer to let me write something for them for nothing...

I have to admit, that last one is my favorite. The simple irony of completing an op-ed about how you should never give away your writing for free by then giving away something you wrote for free is the kind of thing I couldn't think up. At some point when the idea formed inside my head, the synapses would all shut down, angrily insisting that something so stupid should never be put into print.

That's why this former slave is thankful that he had the opportunity to write for free, which became writing for pay, all while avoiding writing an entire op-ed with a culminating line that negates the entire thing.

from the well,-look-at-that dept

One of the things that we've found odd about the decade and a half history of the legacy entertainment industry seeking (often successfully) to shut down a variety of new platforms, is that if you actually looked at the artists who didn't completely freak out at these new services and who recognized what the new services were (better platforms for distribution and promotion, rather than the end of all civilization and culture as we know it), you quickly find that, if done right, the platforms could be used to those artists' advantage. We saw artists use the original Napster to their advantage, only to see it shut down. Ditto for MP3.com, Grokster, Kazaa, Limewire, Megaupload and more. Plenty of artists have discussed how incredibly useful The Pirate Bay has been as a platform for distribution and promotion.

Now, admittedly, many of these companies and services were shut down for some form of copyright infringement or inducement to infringement. So, you can argue that they were illegal. But if we went back even further, we saw the same complaints against many other platforms including the radio, cable TV, the VCR, the DVR, the MP3 player and online video services like YouTube. And yet, every one of those has survived, and they have turned out to be very important parts of the market. In fact, you can look and see how each of those helped expand and grow markets, even as they were decried as being tools of infringement when they first came on the scene.

This is why I'm so fascinated by the artists who are the early adopters -- who jump onto these platforms in the early days and show how they can be used to the artist's own advantage. Because it's through those people that we learn how these platforms, be they tools of infringement or not, can quite possibly help artists much more than hurt them -- if those artists learn to use the tools correctly.

All of that is prelude to this case study, concerning a band called Quiet Company that teamed up to take part in Grooveshark's new Artist Development project, in which Grooveshark would see if it could help "break a band" via the internet. Grooveshark, of course, is a company that is currently being sued by a large chunk of the recording industry for its music player. In talking to various artists about it-- even those who often are more willing to experiment with new platforms -- I've seen many artists really dislike Grooveshark. But, clearly, it has built up a giant, loyal and engaged user-base. And, as always, it seems that, if done right, artists could embrace that to a positive effect, which is appears to be what happened with Quiet Company. First up, if you'd like to hear some of their music, you can click the widget below:

I spoke to Quiet Company's manager, who told me that the band was being courted by various record labels, but they quickly realized that they were getting offered deals that weren't the most "artist friendly," and that they had no desire to work with a record label unless they knew that the band was the one with the leverage. So, when Grooveshark approached them, noting that Quiet Company seemed to be doing quite well on Grooveshark, and that they wanted to try to help "break" the band online, the band thought it was a great idea. In terms of what Grooveshark did for the band, it included promoting the band more heavily within Grooveshark and in other places, promoting YouTube videos (more on that below), promoting tours with "tour skins" in locations where the band was heading, highlighting releases, doing promos, contests and the like. They also did some more traditional promotions work, including pushing college radio and festivals, while also finding brand sponsors.

There are a number of interesting tidbits in the case study looking at an entire year or so in which Grooveshark worked to help Quiet Company. One thing that's important to note, of course, is that the band didn't just rely on Grooveshark, but worked to use Grooveshark in combination with other platforms to get attention. Grooveshark seemed to drive steady growth in part by using its own tools to help drive growth elsewhere, such as YouTube. Take a look, for example, at the following timeline:

You can see that there's a massive spike coming when YouTube engagement ads ran. Those ads are something that Grooveshark launched last year, to help promote artists, and it looks like that clearly had a pretty big impact. The "ads" ask Grooveshark users to view a portion of a music video to get to use the rest of the site ad free for a period of time, and that massively increased the YouTube views for the band. The timing did also coincide with last year's SXSW Music, where the band played (and got significant press attention -- Time, NPR Music, Billboard -- which certainly helped), but the band says that Grooveshark was instrumental in getting the necessary exposure.

Furthermore, a closer look at Grooveshark promotions, shows that they also impacted things like visits to the website and Facebook likes.

But, perhaps more importantly, the end result of this experiment was that the band started making more money with a much broader, international fanbase. The band had a popular following, locally in Texas, where it was from, but had much less support as they got further from home. On Facebook and YouTube, the "top cities" were all in Texas. However, that changed drastically, leading to the ability to tour more widely. After the partnership, rather than just cities in Texas, they had big followings (via Facebook) in Bogota, Sao Paulo and Barcelona, among many other places. The top countries for followers if you looked at YouTube and Facebook included not just the US, but the UK, Canada, Germany, Brazil and Spain. The band is getting ready to perform outside the US for the first time.

And, not surprisingly, with a broader fan base, their touring revenue shot up as well.

All in all, it's an interesting case study of a band that had a loyal local following, but hadn't "broken." Then it embraced a platform like Grooveshark and to see if it helped or hurt the band. It certainly seems like the band is in a much better position after working with Grooveshark than before. Even if you make the case that their success had nothing to do with Grooveshark, but was due to other factors, it certainly doesn't look like working with Grooveshark harmed the band, as some would imply.

In talking to the band's manager, he repeatedly pointed out that the exposure from Grooveshark made all the difference in the world, and took the band from having a loyal and devoted local following to a band that really had a big following in many places around the globe. He pointed out that the key, in his mind, was that this was a promotional platform, with the focus being on building up a fanbase who loved the music, and to then tour to make money to support that. When asked if there were any "lessons learned" or regrets, the one thing he noted is that they should have been better prepared to go out on tour as soon as things started to break. He felt that they could have done a bit more if they were ready to tour more widely earlier last year.

Something else really interesting came out of the case study and the discussion: after all of this, Quiet Company actually got a private investment from a group of fans to continue what they're doing. That is, rather than signing with a record label, a huge fan actually approached the band and asked them about investing in them, and set up a deal (with a few other fans) that is better than a record deal in that it's very artist friendly. Quiet Company's manager told me that this fan has been a big supporter of the band for a long time -- often buying a bunch of tickets to their shows and just giving them out to a bunch of her friends, and they were pleasantly surprised when that turned into her investing directly in the band.

Separately, he notes that the band believes strongly that this kind of thing was a result of the band really working hard to connect closely with their fans, and that with this greater exposure, it lets them try to do that on a larger scale.

This isn't, of course, to say that every artist should automatically jump on board with Grooveshark. It's just yet another case study in a growing list that shows that where artists carefully and smartly construct a broad strategy that leverages various tools to help promote and distribute their works, combined with connecting with the fans, they can have really compelling success stories. Even as some decry those platforms for claimed copyright infringement, it seems like these platforms can be helpful in doing the most important thing: building a fanbase. And, from there, the band needs to work to connect with that fanbase, and give them ways to support the band. It would be great if, rather than attacking such platforms over and over again, we spent more time like this, looking at ways that artists can use various platforms to their own advantage to succeed.

from the if-you-can't-monetize-that,-you-fail dept

The NY Times is running an article about a bunch of illustrators complaining that Google offered to promote their work for free as special skins for its Chrome browser. The concern? That Google wouldn't pay them to promote their work. Of course, that's fine. They can (and many did) choose not to accept this free promotion, but it's difficult to understand what sort of statement they think they're making. As Google noted, it found plenty of takers for the chance at such a great channel for promotion, so all those artists who stood by their "principles" will suddenly find out that for all their complaints about not being "paid" by Google, lots of artists will get a lot more exposure, and hopefully most of them are smart about turning exposure into money. Google wasn't asking the artists to do anything new, but to reuse an existing work -- but from that, it's likely that people will learn about these artists, and that could (or should) easily lead to new work. The cost to artists is next to nothing, but the potential payoff is quite high. So why deny it? It's the same silly entitlement mentality that has people think that for every use of work they've already done they must get paid. It's a failure to recognize that exposure is a form of payment, and widespread exposure from a brand like Google should be quite easily monetizable. People who think compensation only comes in money are going to have a lot of difficulty succeeding in the digital era.